In this My Dear White Friend letter, I want to explore unconscious bias and what happens when it becomes a place to retreat from accountability.
My dear white friend,
Could you ever become someone you or I would not recognise?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about something I’ve noticed happening around us, and I’ve been wondering whether you’ve noticed it too. I am encountering people who appear increasingly comfortable expressing racist views openly. Some no longer seem particularly concerned about being perceived as racist or even being called racist. Some appear prepared to embrace it. Sometimes the message is unmistakable: “I am racist, and I’m proud.”
It makes me wonder what has happened for someone to arrive at that position. What has changed within them? What has changed around them? What has become acceptable in their social environment that might once have been concealed, questioned or challenged? And who, knowingly or unknowingly, is helping to make that behaviour feel normal? It has also made me think again about unconscious bias and accountability — and about what happens when an explanation for our behaviour begins to protect us from examining it.
I want to explore that with you. We talk about unconscious bias a great deal. It is a real and important concept. We can absorb stereotypes, assumptions and associations from the environments around us without necessarily recognising that we have done so. Our behaviour can be influenced by these assumptions even when they conflict with the values we consciously believe we hold. But I have started wondering whether the language of unconscious bias can sometimes become a psychologically comfortable place to retreat to, almost like a cave. We can say, “I didn’t realise,” “I didn’t mean it that way,” or “It was unconscious bias.” Sometimes those explanations may be entirely genuine. I am not suggesting that unconscious bias is deliberate, or that repeated behaviour automatically becomes conscious. Human behaviour is much more complicated than that.
But what happens when someone shines a light into the cave? What happens when the impact of our behaviour has been brought to our attention and we still return to exactly the same explanation? Do we look at what has been revealed, or do we retreat further into the darkness because what we might discover feels too uncomfortable? Perhaps unconscious bias should sometimes be the beginning of the inquiry rather than the end of it.
And, my dear white friend, I wonder whether the cave provides sanctuary for more than one person. It may protect the person whose behaviour is being questioned, but it may also shelter the people around them. It reminds me of what sometimes happens when a child is accused of doing something wrong and, before anyone has really established what happened, a parent rushes in: “My child would never do that.” “They didn’t know what they were doing.” “That’s not who they are.” Perhaps the parent is right. Perhaps the child genuinely did not understand what they were doing. Perhaps the accusation is mistaken. But what happens when the need to protect the child becomes stronger than the willingness to find out what actually happened? Are we protecting the child from an unfair accusation, or are we protecting an image of the child that we cannot bear to have questioned?
I wonder whether we sometimes do something similar with adults. “They didn’t mean it.” “They’re not that kind of person.” “They’re a good person.” Perhaps we are protecting our image of someone we love, respect or identify with. And perhaps, in protecting them, we are also protecting ourselves from what acknowledging their behaviour might require us to confront.
But I think there may be something even deeper happening. Perhaps sometimes we are protecting our belief in humanity itself. What does it mean to discover that someone we have always regarded as kind, generous, fair and decent can also behave in a way that harms or diminishes another person? Does acknowledging that behaviour threaten only our understanding of them, or does it begin to trouble something much bigger — our belief that good people simply would not behave in these ways?
There is a phrase I have used for many years in my work with the Six Stages Framework: we all like to think of ourselves as good people. Of course we do. We want to believe that we are fair, decent and kind. We want to believe the same about our friends, our families, our colleagues and the organisations we belong to. Perhaps we also want to believe that the people around us share the values we think we share. But what happens when the evidence challenges that reassuring picture? What happens when patterns of exclusion, unequal treatment or persistent disparities suggest that an environment we experience as fair is not experienced as fair by everyone? What happens when someone we consider a good person behaves in a way that diminishes another person’s dignity? Do we become curious about the evidence, or do we start searching for explanations that allow us to preserve what we already believe?
I see a version of this in caring professions too. Educational psychologists, nurses, teachers and many other professionals often enter their work because they genuinely want to help people. Caring, fairness and making a positive difference may be central to how we see ourselves. “We went into this profession to do good. So how could we possibly be biased?” I understand the pull of that reasoning. Surely our intentions count for something. Of course they do. But do our intentions tell us everything about the impact of our behaviour?
Could an educational psychologist who has spent a career supporting children still make judgements influenced by bias? Could a nurse committed to caring for patients still participate in practices that result in unequal experiences? Could a teacher who deeply cares about children still hold different expectations of different groups? Our commitment to doing good does not make us immune from getting things wrong. In fact, shouldn’t caring make us more willing, rather than less willing, to look carefully when the evidence challenges us? Perhaps being a good person should not require us to maintain an unquestionable belief in our own goodness. Perhaps it should include the willingness to examine what happens when our intentions and somebody else’s experience do not match.
And while everybody is busy protecting someone’s goodness, another question troubles me. What happens to the person who experienced the behaviour? Where do they find sanctuary? Who is protecting them? Whose humanity are we protecting, and whose humanity might we be overlooking while we preserve our faith in somebody else’s?
There is something uncomfortable in that question for me, because recognising that someone we love or respect is capable of causing harm does not mean that we have to stop loving them, abandon them or decide that they are beyond redemption. Surely part of being human is recognising that people can be loving in one relationship and harmful in another, that good intentions do not guarantee good outcomes, and that caring about someone does not require us to protect them from accountability. Perhaps our humanity is better preserved not by denying what human beings are capable of, but by recognising our capacity to reflect, take responsibility and change.
That is why I keep returning to the cave. What happens after the light has been switched on? Do those around us encourage us to look at what has been revealed, or do they rush to shield us from it? And when the same behaviour continues, do we ever reach a point where we have to ask whether “unconscious bias” is still an adequate explanation on its own?
This, for me, is where unconscious bias and accountability have to meet. Again, I am not suggesting that repetition automatically proves conscious intent. I am asking whether there is a difference between genuinely being unaware and repeatedly refusing the opportunities that might help us become more aware. Perhaps there is also a difference between recognising that we all have unconscious biases and using their unconscious nature to distance ourselves from responsibility for what our behaviour actually does.
Then there is another response I hear quite often: “I don’t see colour. I treat everyone the same.” I understand why that can sound fair. But what happens when insisting that we treat everybody exactly the same stops us asking whether everybody is actually experiencing the same opportunities, treatment or outcomes? Could our certainty about our own fairness sometimes make us less curious about its consequences?
My dear white friend, I know you have not yet read my book. Perhaps you have been meaning to. Perhaps life has simply got in the way. Or perhaps — and I say this gently — there are questions within its pages that you are not quite ready to confront. I hope one day you will open it, not simply to read what I have written, but to think about what it might ask of you.
Within the Six Stages Framework, I distinguish between positions including unawareness and inactivity, dismissal and avoidance, hostility and rejection, blaming and deflecting, deeply entrenched views and extremist leadership. These are different psychological and behavioural positions. They are not an inevitable sequence, and people do not necessarily move neatly from one to the next. But my developing thinking about stages and states has made me increasingly interested in something else: the environments around us.
What states do our environments make easier for us to inhabit? A state of curiosity? A state of defensiveness? A state of fear? A state of hostility? A state in which something we once found unacceptable gradually begins to feel ordinary? Or even a state in which racism becomes something a person is prepared to celebrate?
I explored this question recently in What State Are You Occupying? And What State Are You Being Drawn Into?. The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether environments do more than influence what we think. They may shape what we become accustomed to, what we stop noticing and what we eventually learn to tolerate. What happens when an environment repeatedly protects people from examining their assumptions? When avoidance becomes normal? When hostility is rewarded? When expressing prejudice brings belonging, attention or approval? What happens when the people around us do not simply offer sanctuary in the cave but begin reinforcing its walls?
And that brings me back to you, my dear white friend. Are there states you believe you could never inhabit? I can almost hear your response: “Of course there are.” And I want to believe you. I really do. I want to believe that however difficult life became, however frightened you felt, however divided our communities became, and however loudly people around you insisted that people like me were responsible for what had gone wrong, there would be somewhere you would simply refuse to go. I want to believe that racism would be one of those places. I want to believe you would never reach a point where my humanity, or the humanity of people who look like me, mattered less to you.
But can I know that? Can you?
I am not asking because I believe you are secretly racist. I am not suggesting that you are destined to become someone who embraces racism. I am asking because I wonder how any of us can be completely certain about who we might become under circumstances we have never experienced.
We often imagine that our values are fixed. But values can feel set in stone while being eroded in tiny, quiet ways. A joke you once challenged becomes one you ignore. A comment you once questioned becomes one you explain away. You stay in the WhatsApp group. You go to the pub and sit quietly while racial slurs or jokes are shared at my expense, or at the expense of people who look like me. You tell yourself that you are not participating because you have not actually said anything. But when does the silence stop feeling uncomfortable? When does it start feeling ordinary? And when does ordinary become the new state you inhabit?
My dear white friend, I wonder whether I would notice that change in you before you noticed it in yourself. Would you still greet me warmly? Would you still tell me I was your friend? Would you reassure me that you were not “one of those people” while gradually becoming more comfortable in their company? Would you tell yourself that you were simply listening to another point of view even when the conversation had moved beyond disagreement and into the diminishing of somebody else’s humanity? And would our friendship become part of the reassurance you offered yourself? “I can’t be racist. Shungu is my friend.”
I never want our friendship to become your proof that you are not racist. I do not want to become the exception that allows you to remain comfortable while other Black people are treated differently when I am not there. I want our friendship to mean something beyond the moments when we are together. I want it to shape what you notice when I am absent, what you question, what you challenge, what you refuse to laugh at and what you refuse to stay silent about.
Because perhaps the shield we use to protect ourselves from uncomfortable questions can eventually become a barrier between us. You might still see me as your friend. You might still greet me warmly and remind me of all the years we have known each other. But what happens if that same shield prevents you from recognising how your silence, your explanations or the environments you choose to remain part of affect me? At what point does the shield that protects your comfort begin to damage our friendship?
And what happens when it is somebody else you care about who starts changing? What do you do when a friend you go to the pub with becomes increasingly dismissive, hostile or entrenched in views you once believed neither of you would tolerate? Do you challenge them? Do you remain connected while refusing to accept their behaviour? Do you stay silent because you are frightened of losing the friendship? Or do you gradually begin adjusting yourself in order to preserve it?
And if you see me being pushed away by the very people you are choosing to remain close to, what will our friendship require of you?
I know these questions are uncomfortable. And they are not only questions for you. I have to ask them of myself too. What states might I inhabit? What assumptions am I protecting? What environments influence me? Where might my own certainty stop me from seeing something I need to see? Who reassures me when perhaps what I need is to be challenged?
None of us should assume that our values will protect us simply because we believe we possess them. Values have to be practised, tested and protected through the choices we make when it would be easier to stay quiet. So I am not asking you for a comforting promise that you will never change. A promise would reassure me for a moment, but it would tell me very little about what you would actually do when your values were tested.
I am asking something harder. What do you do today when a friend makes a degrading comment? What do you do when your workplace rewards silence? What do you do when someone you love starts becoming more hostile? What relationships, habits and choices are you putting in place now to help you recognise if you are being pulled towards a position you once believed you would never occupy?
My dear white friend, I want to believe that there are states you would never inhabit. But perhaps friendship requires me to ask you something harder.
What are you doing now to make sure that remains true?
Yours,
Shungu
This is the extended version of Letter Six in the My Dear White Friend series. A shorter letter edition is published through the My Dear White Friend LinkedIn newsletter. This extended version explores in greater depth the psychology of unconscious bias, accountability, professional identity, environmental influence and the states we believe we would never inhabit.
https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7494043522128543745
My Dear White Friend is a reflective letter series. The letters draw on personal experience, psychological understanding and composite scenarios to explore racism, relationships, belonging and human behaviour. They are not accounts of a single identifiable individual or relationship.
